


Refuges

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [12]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Domestic Violence, English Regency, Historical Queer Culture, Other, Smoking, Swearing, The Bad angels don't appear in person but we do get the skinny on what they Want so I'm tagging them, but you know Regency swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-22 12:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20874134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: Aziraphale wants a bookshop. Crowley wants him to have one.  But the kind of bookshop an angel needs takes meticulous planning, and Aziraphale has found them a safe place to collaborate.





	1. Meeting with Felicity

**Author's Note:**

> Notes for Chapter 1  
The term “molly house,” used in the 18th and 19th centuries, could be applied to any gathering place for people who would now fall under the queer umbrella. Though most contemporary accounts I’ve read were from the pens of straight observers whose interpretations cannot be trusted, my impression is that camp genderbending mingled with protective habits like feminine aliases in the context of social oases within which they could dress, speak, and behave in ways that felt natural to them. And yes, some of them were brothels, and some were essentially bars, but some were private homes. We all write from what we know because that’s all we have, so Phillida and Julia are inevitably reminiscent of certain couples I remember from the early 80s, who generously shared the stability they’d constructed for themselves with a rotating cast of queer friends, relations, and acquaintances in a microculture that was at once intimate and anonymous, undemanding and rife with drama, supportive and fragile. They may not have worn muslin and Hessian boots, but they shared their amusements, their food, and their bedrooms without hesitation, and that has always felt like the beating heart of queer culture to me.
> 
> On a more sensitive matter, I have seen both impassioned arguments against portraying Crowley (a literal demon) in Jewish-coded ways, and also read fic by Jewish authors enthusiastically embracing him as a fellow Jew. I am way too gentile to have an opinion on the matter. But claiming to be a demonized minority in order to tempt the privileged to act on the systems of bigotry that privilege them seems to me a properly Crowleian thing to do, and testing Aziraphale’s friends for weaknesses doesn’t exactly sound unlike him, either. Sometimes you’re writing along, characters do things, and you look at it the result and think, You know, if somebody objects, I’ll live. Maybe I’ll learn something in the process. Go for it.
> 
> For the record, I’m assuming both angels and demons to be aloof from and ignorant about most human religious practices. (Crowley and Aziraphale canonically have no idea how humans create, use, distribute, and curate holy water, for example.) They don’t need religion to tell them about God, Heaven, Hell, or creation. They were there for all that.
> 
> Also, at this place and time, the men they were pretending to be would have smoked pipes in certain situations. Aziraphale is of course still using the first pipe Crowley ever brought him, sometime in the 17th century, when the tobacco was stronger and the amount smoked smaller.

The house was tall and narrow, with a knocker in the shape of a heraldic panther (complete with fire coming out its ears). Someone inside played the harpsichord tolerably well, and the whole place glowed faintly with Aziraphale’s blessing. Crowley wasn’t certain what he’d expected, but this didn’t seem to be it. Oh, well, existence would be boring if you only got what you expected. He climbed the tall stairs leading to the first-floor front door, knocked, waited, and knocked again.

In this neighborhood, doors were more likely to be answered by maids than by footmen, but the person who opened this door seemed to be an amalgam of the two. Crowley smiled the smile that made servants think of tips and said: “Good evening. I’m meeting Felicity?”

She stood aside. “Oh, yes, sir. She’s occupied, but I’ll put you in the sitting room and let her know you’re here.” She led him to the right after taking his hat; but the door to the left stood open. As the crowd around the harpsichord started belting out bawdy alternate lyrics for “To Anacreon in Heaven,” he began to understand where he was. The maid told the sitting room: “Here’s Miss Felicity’s young man. I’m off to fetch her,” and left him without further introduction, facing a man in face powder, lace, and knee breeches and another in a lovely sprigged muslin gown and Hessian boots. Muslin and boots observed him from above her fan, while knee breeches hopped off the divan to greet him.

“Good evening! Felicity was waiting for you, but Margery’s gone and gotten her heart broken and won’t let anybody else near her. She won’t be long, I’m sure. I’m Phillida, and this is Julia.”

Crowley made sure his roll of plans was secure beneath his elbow and said, not quite at random, “Eve,” shaking hands with Phillida and bowing to Julia.

“It’s so charming to finally meet you,” said Phillida.

“You’re not what we expected,” said Julia, “but then she’s always so coy about you it’s impossible to say _what_ we expected!”

Ah, yes, the universal “prepared by Aziraphale” experience. “She _does_ talk about me, though? You surprise me.”

“I don’t believe she ever meant to,” said Julia, rolling her eyes. “You know what she’s like! But a couple of the girls started vying for her attentions and suddenly she was mentioning her _particular friend_ at least once an hour.”

“I told her months ago she was welcome to invite you any time,” said Phillida, which presumably meant the house was hers. “And she’s been dodging the issue, so I was ever so pleased when she told me you’d be here tonight. We’re all_ so_ fond of her!” Crowley knew that tone, and the look Julia leveled at him, too. He warmed to them, for being in the “protect the angel from his own good nature” camp. “But I’m afraid you must take us as you find us.”

That sounded defensive. Crowley wished he hadn’t dressed up so much. Unless he missed his guess, this was the house - a little cramped, everything in style but nothing expensive - of someone in a trade rather than a profession, and sensitive about it. Envy and Vanity, he noted, from habit. “It seems to me I find you well enough,” he said. “Felicity’s recommendation is all I need. And I’m desperately curious what she’s told you.”

He directed that at Julia, who did not disappoint him, but leaned forward with sparkling eyes, ready to dish. “Hardly anything! Gathering her hints is like following breadcrumbs! We know about your eyes because she got your optician’s address for poor Eliza, and we know you’ve spent far too much of the past ten years on the Continent, and you won’t read novels but don’t mind being read to -“

“Oi, I like _that_! I love being read to, if she’s the one doing it. It’s not my fault print’s so hard to read in these specs!”

“...and you barely eat but are a fiend for coffee, and taught her to smoke but never have a pipe on you, and got her out of jail once, and are elegant and satirical and clever, and you’ve always known each other but can’t be seen together because families are _terrible_.”

“I see. So she didn’t lead with the Jewish bit, then?” Crowley raised his voice enough to be sure that Aziraphale - who he could feel outside the door now - heard him. Julia managed not to recoil; Phillida looked wrongfooted. “If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a dozen times, it saves bother later on.”

“It’s nobody’s business, my dear.” Aziraphale bustled in, dressed exactly as he always was, rather to Crowley’s disappointment; but suffused with happy-angel radiance, which made up for it. “We don’t ask personal questions here, and certainly don’t go around volunteering personal information about other people.” He kissed Crowley on the cheek, briskly, as if this were normal. All right, then! This was normal!

“Of, of course not,” said Phillida, who plainly had never considered the possibility of entertaining a Jew, but was not about to offend Aziraphale about it. “We’re all family here, you know. Have you got Margery calmed down? Should I go to her?”

“She’s reached the point of being wretched about being wretched, and will be taking a little nap before supper.”

“Thank you for dealing with her! I’m afraid she wears me out and I only make her worse if I try to talk to her before she’s done crying.”

“I have no patience with her,” said Julia. “I know she’s young, but it’s time for her to grow some skin. It’s not as if we didn’t all_ warn_ her when the business started.”

“And you think that makes it easier for her?” Crowley asked. “Knowing everyone else was right and I was a fool never made anything _I_ ever did feel better.” The roll of plans tried to escape from under his elbow, and Aziraphale plucked it away, leaving him holding only the portfolio of notes.

“Regardless, she’s delayed your business long enough,” said Phillida. “The gong’ll sound for supper, but you and Eve can have the library as long as you need it, Felicity dear. Make yourselves free of the brandy. After all, we wouldn’t have it if it weren’t for you.”

“Oh, _this_ is who you wanted the brandy for? You might have said.”

“You might have asked.”

“I did. You said ‘a friend.’”

“And I told the truth.” Aziraphale ushered Crowley through a door into a small library with a large desk, closed the door behind him, and raised one eyebrow. “When did you turn Jewish?”

Crowley shrugged. “Sometimes I’m Catholic. Or atheist. Or Irish. Anything that’ll set the cat among the pigeons.”

“Well, I think it’s in _horrible_ taste!”

“I’m not the one who invented demonizing people, but once the humans did, you can’t blame me for keeping the pot stirring. I’m always on my best behavior when I do it - the temptation pays off better if all the energy feeding the bigotry comes from the bigot.”

“And what do you tell Jews you are, when you’re tempting them?”

“I don’t tempt Jews. They have gentiles for that! You know me, angel - start at the top of the privilege heap and let the ball roll downward.”

“We’re hardly at the top of the privilege heap_ here_.”

“All right, sorry; only it occurs to me that ‘_Oh,_ Felicity’s fellow is _Jewish_’ beats any number of stories we could invent as an explanation for why we have to be so careful.” His mouth twitched. “You might have mentioned you were inviting me to a mollyhouse, angel.”

“Where did you _think_ I was inviting you, with a password like _I’m meeting Felicity_?” Aziraphale rolled the plans out on the desk, weighting the corners with an inkwell, an address book, a paperweight shaped like a cockleshell, and a letteropener shaped like no sword that had ever been wielded upon the earth.

“I had no idea. Head completely empty.” Crowley found the brandy decanter and took Phillida at her word.“I remember a time when you wouldn’t eat in a brothel with me, and now apparently we’re having supper here.”

“It’s _not_ a brothel! It’s Phillida and Julia’s _home_. They keep open house for their friends on most days and _yes_, the chambers _are_ available to guests who need a little privacy, but mostly it’s a place to stop in and take down the facades for an evening. People who want to dress comfortably leave clothes here, and dining’s informal, and both the cook and the maid were rescued from a freak show, poor things, that displayed them as hermaphrodites, so there’s not a judgmental eye in sight. Phillida keeps a box on the mantel in the drawing room where we all drop in a pound or two when we can, to cover the suppers and candles and drinks and whatnot. It would be easy for both of us to justify being here at the same time by accident - you trying to corrupt them and me trying to protect them.”

“That’s why you come here, is it? To protect them?”

“They belong to a highly vulnerable population.” Aziraphale went to the mantelpiece and took down a pristine new pipe from a rack.

“So do prostitutes.”

“We couldn’t conduct this business properly in a brothel.” Aziraphale took out his tobacco pouch and began packing the bowl. “If I’d known you were going to be all pompotical about it -“

“I’m not! Angel! Honestly, I’m not. Only I wasn’t expecting it and now I wonder things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Like - how long have you been coming to places like this?”

“As long as they’ve been around. Haven’t you?”

“No! I mean - I’ve been in them before, of course I have, but not one like this, where apparently everybody knows each other and nobody’s paid to roll over. If there’s any actual Lust going on here, as opposed to normal healthy appetites, it’s so neglected I can’t sense it.” He tasted the brandy. It wasn’t the pinnacle of brandies, since he’d acquired it from the smugglers on behalf of Aziraphale’s friend rather than on behalf of Aziraphale, but it was better than the average honest tradesman in London was likely to have in his library, so well done Crowley. “Normally I’d go by Lilith, but that felt all wrong here.”

“I think Eve is a sweet choice.” Aziraphale passed him the full pipe and an encouraging smile. “Phillida picked this up for you, since I’ve told her how you can never keep track of the things. You can leave it on the rack and it’ll be here any time you care to come. _All_ she knows about you is that you’re my friend and we need a place to meet away from prying eyes, so she’s prepared to make you welcome over and over again.”

Which was as much to say, that he was trusting Crowley with a great deal here; and Crowley accepted the pipe and lit it with a finger snap, as token that he understood and would honor that. “So I’m your friend, now, am I? You’ve said that out loud, in so many words? Your _particular friend_, even, according to Julia.”

Aziraphale took out his own pipe, a comically small one, by present standards, that he’d had about a hundred and fifty years now. “In this house, yes. We’re no different from anyone else here, in that regard. They’d all stand by each other, in certain circumstances, and all deny each other, in others, and _no_ one would blame _any_one.”

Crowley drew in a lungful of smoke, taking plenty of time to consider his next words before he let it out again. “That’s not the only regard we’re not so different in, is it? I hadn’t wondered before. It seemed natural enough, as skin hungry as you get, and as fond as you are of your earthly pleasures. But now, well - is this where you got the idea? For Paris?”

Aziraphale busied himself with his pipe, packing it, lighting it with an ember from the grate, sucking on it to get the air flowing.

_Shut your mouth, Crowley. You’ll ruin things again._ “If it is, I owe them one, is all I mean.”

The pipe started drawing. Aziraphale’s radiance did not falter, but he did not look up as he asked: “It doesn’t bother you, that I don’t want to do it again?” (_I can’t see what you want, my dear_, he’d whispered, once, in a refuge made of wings and wards and water. _You have to find ways to let me know_.)

“How can anything bother me, when you’re still visibly afterglowing?” He hadn’t seen Aziraphale this relaxed, this long, in...ever? Maybe Rome? His Vanity did not mind competing with the Resurrection for honors in the “making Aziraphale happy longest” sweepstakes. “You wanted something and you came to me for it, that’s all I care about.”

“Well, I couldn’t have _wanted_ it from anybody else!” Aziraphale did not quite mumble around the pipestem.

Crowley tried not to grin like an idiot. “I’m glad it happened once, all right? And if these people piqued your curiosity, they’re some of my favorite people.”

Aziraphale took the pipe out of his mouth, and Smiled. “Mine too! You’ll see at supper - they’re all so lovely!”

“Of course they are.” If Aziraphale didn’t think people were lovely in some way, he didn’t hang about with them. “We should get on those diagrams if we want to decide where your bookshop will be before the gong, though.”

This change of subject was rewarded with another Smile and a happy wiggle. Aziraphale pulled a stool over to the desk, leaving the chair for Crowley to sprawl in, and arranged the candles to cast light upon the plans. “Thank you so much for going over my calculations for me - oh! You don’t like the Soho location? What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s too unstable financially! Look -“ Crowley opened up the portfolio, pulled out his charts, and they were off and arguing, heads close together as intricate models of unmodelable factors in the dynamic system that was London formed in the four-dimensional space created by the combination of plans, notes, and their own gesturing hands, pipes, and brandy snifters. Aziraphale’s impassioned accounting of his reasons for preferring a financially unstable district, especially one in which the chthonic and ethereal leys converged so precisely at a crossroads, did not so much win Crowley over to the Soho plat as flatten his objections to it, and he only withheld surrender on the subject in order to enjoy the spectacle of the siege his angel laid to his understanding. In the end they agreed on the size, shape, and best astral conditions for creating a Soho bookshop, and Crowley made note of his own first choice, in Mayfair, contemplating a purchase of his own.

That settled, they returned to altering the geas around Aziraphale’s neck. It had to be done delicately, so as not to alert Sandalphon (if Crowley ever got a chance at Sandalphon, he was _taking_ it), and they’d been patiently picking away at it for months now. Finally, tonight, they loosened it enough that Aziraphale could be confident that, should a miracle be necessary to save someone else, the fact that he was _also_ in the area of effect would not shut it down. This did not seem adequate to Crowley, but Aziraphale declared himself satisfied, and the gong sounded, so they tapped out their pipes, bundled up their papers, and went down to supper together.

Crowley could have skipped supper and not minded, apart from the pleasure of watching Aziraphale eat. The dining room was slightly too small for all the people in it; and as for keeping track of those people, remembering for more than a moment which male body was Kitty and which Georgina or whoever, no one should expect it of him. Eliza was simple enough, with her spectacles not quite as dark as his own, and the two pairs of bodily women (one of whom should have had a male body, and two of whom wore tailcoats and breeches) stood out; and then there was Margery, distinguishable by her tear-reddened eyes, her extreme youth (seventeen at most), the general air of recent angel-blessed sleep, and her lack of boundaries. She gave her hand to Crowley with a theatrical air and said reproachfully to Aziraphale: “Darling, you never said he was a toff!” as if the subject of the remark were deaf.

“I’m not a toff,” said Crowley. “I have access to money. Not the same thing.”

They were seated in the closest approximation Phillida and Julia could manage to the current style in semi-formal dining, with certain pairings - including Crowley and Aziraphale - assumed to be “married” and set across from each other, and the singles distributed in the gaps, possibly according to some idiosyncratic gender or status calculation that Crowley had no interest in puzzling out. He ate enough to be minimally polite, splitting his attention between Aziraphale, finding a comfortable way to arrange his limbs, and being the right amount of charming and diverting. Margery in particular wanted to be charmed and diverted and he didn’t mind indulging her.

“So what is this mysterious business you and Felicity are conducting?”

“Felicity wants a bookshop, and I want her to have what she wants. What’s mysterious about that?”

“Only that she wouldn’t talk about it! Couldn’t you have conducted that business at your offices?”

“She’s not even supposed to know where my offices _are_.” Offices! He needed some!

“Are your families _really_ as formidable as that? When_ I’m_ as old as _you_ are, my family won’t have a _word_ to say about where I go, I assure you!”

“You have all my best wishes for that. Our families are each worse than the other, and if you ever have the chance to be introduced to either, you should run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Romeo and Juliet aren’t in it!”

“That is not how you quash her curiosity, my dear,” said Aziraphale, his foot checking one of Crowley’s on its restless journey through the cramped space under the table.

“Since when do I quash curiosity, angel?” Crowley, intrigued, let him guide the intercepted foot into position, and deployed the second one experimentally in the same direction.

“Margery, dear, you must learn the difference between interest and impertinence. Especially when talking to Eve! Because she will _always_ answer questions, whether she should or not.” Aziraphale spoke as primly as if Crowley’s feet hadn’t settled on top of his own under the table, the leather smooth and supple under his soles.

“I don’t mean to be impertinent,” said Margery. “Only how am I supposed to make wise decisions, if I don’t have examples to follow? If I don’t ask questions I never get the whole story.”

“You’ve got that right. But if you’re looking for the rules to happiness, there’s no such thing. You do the best you can with what you’ve got, and what you can’t make the best of, you escape. That’s it. That’s all you need to know.” Crowley separated out the toes on one foot enough to maximize the sensation as he went exploring for the boundary Aziraphale was setting, here, and found some stocking. Silk, because of course it was.

“I’m afraid Eve’s a fatalist,” said Aziraphale, twisting both of his feet so as to trap both of Crowley’s between them, eyes sparking and mouth that butter wouldn’t melt in. “You’re too young for that nonsense. Happiness is having something to look forward to, and working toward it.”

“Not if you can never _get_ there! Real life doesn’t have happy endings, only sad ones. You’re the one always saying we can’t do what we want.” Crowley shamelessly utilized his flexibility of form to worm his feet around Aziraphale’s, trapping the trapper.

“_Yet_, my dear.” Aziraphale beamed at him, pulling his feet directly up, freeing them neither quickly nor decisively. “Have faith, and we’ll have a happy beginning in due course.”

“At this point, I’ll settle for you having your bookshop,” said Crowley, trying to tickle Aziraphale’s soles, but of course Aziraphale spent real money for real shoes and couldn’t be tickled. All the same, he lowered his feet in apparent surrender. Crowley wondered if he could spin this into “routed an angel,” but when they wound up with their toes pressed together companionably for the rest of the meal, he had to concede that it was, at most, a draw.

Oh, well. He could live with that.


	2. The Joan Problem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale are comfortable, but you can only be so honest with humans, especially when a crisis arises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sir Roger de Coverley, known in America as the Virginia Reel, is the easiest dance in the entire category of English country dancing. Banishment to the whist table, as readers of Regency novels should understand, amounts to being so bad at dancing that they are old before their time.

Between Julia’s connections in the building trade, and Aziraphale’s relaxed attitude there, Phillida’s house became their natural meeting place during the various stages of making the bookshop a reality and improving Crowley’s Mayfair property. The day he showed his first tentative plans to Aziraphale and they realized the possibilities in the overlapping fields surrounding the two plats was so exciting that they infected the whole household with nervous energy and found themselves partaking in an impromptu ball, during which they danced Sir Roger de Coverley so badly that Julia officially banished them to the whist table for life.

The guest roster varied so much that Crowley never learned many names, but that was all right - it would be awkward, from a business standpoint, if he and Aziraphale truly shared human friends, and these people didn’t move in the social circles he needed to cultivate for his current projects, though he did hear a fair amount of useful gossip. As well as a great deal of _un_useful gossip, but apparently things Aziraphale had in hand often benefited from that.

Margery was almost as constant a presence as Julia and Phillida. He made no attempt to track her dramatic emotional life (on the whole he sided with Julia in the matter; on the one hand, she was essentially a child; on the other hand, he’d seen younger humans rule estates and countries reasonably competently), but she was Phillida’s cousin or something, and moreover the Joan who kept breaking her heart was also the holder of her apprenticeship, so she at least had a real rather than manufactured problem. Joan herself was an invisible haunting presence, someone once welcome and now banned, even when Margery went through a reversal of sentiment and begged them to allow her to return, on the grounds that the marriage for which Joan had set Margery aside was a sham and Joan truly meant to reconcile this time and carry on a discreet and amicable arrangement, with the full consent of the wife, who wasn’t a harpy after all, and the bruises weren’t anything, Margery was just clumsy. It was all very tiresome, especially when Margery got into a state from which only Aziraphale could talk her down.

Such inconveniences were offset by the ease of association Aziraphale allowed here. Not only did they get the library to themselves on request, but they could speak freely and be no more incomprehensible than the other guests, most of whom were either lovers, friends of long association, or relics of previous mollyhouse circles, all of which had developed their own lingering jargons. A casual reference to oysters in Rome or falling off a nunnery roof were no more mysterious than those to rats’ hotels or Spanish onlookers made by others, and everyone was so _au fait_ with the types of events and persons covered by such code words that everyone always thought they understood everything. Aziraphale delighted in such deceptive frankness, and Crowley encouraged him with displays of grouchiness.

One spring afternoon he came by early in order to ask Julia’s advice on builders. While watery daylight poured in, she still wore her workday snuff-colored coat, and had not yet shaved to receive visitors; but she shed her work persona gradually as they consulted, and after completion of business she began making coffee and became frank and confidential. By the time she poured, she could not have looked or sounded more matronly had she donned a turban and false curls. Crowley began to sense a Purpose. “Now, I don’t like to be too personal,” she began, holding the coffee cup out to him.

“And yet you will not let that deter you,” said Crowley, accepting. Julia was a virtuoso of domestic tea and coffee service, never ever forgetting how anyone took theirs.

“I will not,” Julia agreed, adding milk and sugar to her own. “But the ordeal will soon be over. I only want to make clear to you that any time you care to retire to the third floor back with Felicity, _everyone_ will concede your right to take precedence over any competitors. And the sooner you do, the better!”

Crowley drank excellent coffee, and said: “I don’t think you understand how things stand with us as well as you think you do, and I don’t feel any obligation to explain. But I assure you, if Felicity ever wants us to retire to the third floor back, or the third floor front, or the garden wall, for that matter, I for one will not concern myself with who _here_ does or doesn’t approve. You girls haven’t been discussing this behind our backs, have you?”

Julia rolled her eyes, which was as good as a _yes_. “She teases you unmercifully! If you wait for her to say something you’ll wait forever, but if you take a little initiative -“

Crowley decided that laughing was his best way out. “No. Julia. Honestly. You’ve completely misread things. We’ve known each other a very long time, we understand each other perfectly, and the teasing is entirely merciful. We have no need to increase our calls upon your hospitality.”

The coy edge left her voice. “I know what _too afraid to act_ looks like, darling.”

Crowley realized that he’d underestimated her. For the first time in over a year, he took a moment to actively check on her wants, and had no difficulty identifying the key point. She wanted to be the hostess of a safe space, where her friends could be themselves, and be happy, in a cold and dangerous world. “Fair enough,” he said. “We have a lot to fear. Things we _will not_ talk about, and if you press Felicity about it I doubt she’ll come back, which would be a shame. You must trust me that our behavior, in light of circumstances, is not excessively cautious. But we’re _not_ suffering. If Felicity didn’t feel safe here, she would behave very differently.”

Julia looked skeptical. “Well. You know your own business best.”

“We do. I can take care of Felicity, and she can take care of me.” _And_ Aziraphale had just turned the corner onto the square, so best wrap this up. “If we need more we’ll ask here first. Will that content you?”

It would, and Julia was in the middle of acknowledging it, when out in the street a man shouted: “You! I knew I’d find you here, you damned whelp!” Two cracks, as of a whip, a shrill whimpering cry; and then, louder and clearer than it should have been, Aziraphale’s prim, fretful voice commanded: _“Stop that at once!”_

“I can whip my own apprentice if I like, and I do! You mind your own business, you damned nancy, or I’ll whip you too!”

“You shall _not,_” Aziraphale contradicted, sounding petulant.

By the time Crowley had the front door open, Margery, with streams of blood and tears across her face, was halfway up the stairs, and Aziraphale had already pressed the assailant against the area railing. A passing cabriolet ran over a dropped horsewhip. Crowley pulled Margery inside to Julia’s anxious arms and called down: “Everything under control, there?”

“Yes, my dear. See to Margery, will you?” Aziraphale didn’t look up, focused on pinning the struggling, swearing man in one of his secure wrestling holds so he could get him calmed down. Judging by the invective level, this might take some time.

“Sure thing, angel. Sing out if you need anything.” Crowley pulled the door shut and turned to Julia, Phillida, and the trembling wreck of Margery. “That’ll be Joan, I take it? Buck up, Margery, she won’t hurt you again - whoa, now, that’s quite a shiner. Never mind, let’s get you to the divan and fix you up.” He hadn’t the angel’s skill in healing or diagnosis, but he detected a cracked rib, and something seemed to be wrong with the orbit of the black eye's socket. The maid appeared with a basin and sponge, Julia produced smelling salts and iodine, and in the course of his and Phillida’s assisting Margery to the divan, Crowley managed to deal with the rib and shut down the nose’s tendency to gush blood. He then left her to Julia, and took the liberty of opening the window onto the evening, letting in a thin raw wind, a blue streak of swearing, and an undercurrent of Aziraphale’s steady, unintelligible, soothing voice.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Margery sobbed, as Julia cleaned her face. “I came home late last night - well, you know that -“

“I know you shouldn’t have gone home at all,” said Phillida. “I should have tied you to the bedpost.”

“I thought they’d be in bed and I’d be able to get my things, but he was waiting for me.”

_So Joan’s lost his pronoun. Wonder if he knows how low he’s Fallen?_

“He grabbed me as soon as I came in the door and gave me a lecture, about how everything was my own fault and all, all the usual things, but I wasn’t about to listen to him this time, I’ve had enough and more than enough, so when he tried to kiss me I pushed him away. And I _tried_ to tell him what, what you told me to say, about the articles, but that only made him angrier, and he threw me onto the floor. But Clarissa came down - I couldn’t believe how sweet she was, after I was such a cur, she tried to persuade him to let me go and come to bed and we’d sort everything out in the morning. And he slapped her! Like he slapped me the first time! _Exactly_ the same way, it was uncanny! So I got between them and, and anyway, I _couldn’t,_ he’s just too strong! He shut me into the pantry for the night, and all today while we worked he never left me alone for an instant. Clarissa was nowhere, not even at lunch, and I was terrified, but along in the evening he locked me into the workroom while he met a client in the parlor, and then Clarissa crept down and turned the key, and left a bundle of my things outside the door and went up again. So I came straight here, but he must have missed me at once and took a hack and, and we need to rescue Clarissa! Or he’ll treat her as he’s treated me, and I suspect she’s in an _interesting condition_!”

From his vantage at the window Crowley saw Aziraphale’s current charge grow increasingly frustrated at his inability to free himself, or even make his captor strain to hold him. In neighboring houses, curtains already drawn for the evening twitched. One reason, Crowley suspected, that Phillida’s boundless hospitality had never drawn comment from the neighbors was, that scenes like this were never enacted, any rowdiness or indecency tucked quietly away behind the shutters.

“Goodness, you’re black and blue all over!” Julia exclaimed.

Crowley glanced over at the divan. Julia, not having to worry about modesty in present company, had taken Margery’s shirt and cravat as well as her coat. A mass of bruises in all stages of development marred his milky-white skin. “Oi, how long have you been putting up with this nonsense?” Crowley asked, as the decibel level of Joan’s swearing rose.

“I’m still his apprentice.” Margery looked embarrassed, as far as any expression could be discerned in the wreck of his face, which looked slightly worse with the blood cleaned off. “He has a right to cane me for insubordination.”

_“I’ve got a right to beat my own apprentice! I’ll have the bleeding law on you, you damn meddling -“_

“Like hell he does.” Crowley slithered over to get a good look at the eye socket. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Margery blinked with the eye that could blink. “Three?”

_“What’re you mollies looking at?”_

Crowley reached out to touch the boy on the temple. Ugh, a chip out of the bone; he could do it, but he’d have to touch her for awhile and that could get awkward. “Got a headache?”

“Yes, but -”

Eliza and her particular friend whatshername scurried into the room all agog. “_Phillida!_ Felicity’s outside grappling Joan and - _oh, Margery!”_

“Never mind _me_, what’s he doing to _Felicity?_”

“Don’t you worry about her,” said Crowley, working on the bone chip. “She can handle herself, and you plainly can’t. I’ve seen worse beatings but you’ll be sore for a month.” He could tell by the atmosphere in the room: They had _all_ seen worse beatings. Some had been through worse. As Aziraphale said, they were a vulnerable population.

“I’ll draw her a bath,” suggested the maid, lighting the candles. Whatever they paid her, it wasn’t enough.

“Eve, why are you_ in here_?” Margery demanded. “Joan’s a head taller than her and he’s strong, you’ve no idea!”

“Felicity will ask for help if she needs it,” said Crowley, as the errant bone chip fused back into place. “Come see for yourself, if you’re so worried. Easy. Lean on me - good girl.”

Phillida drew up a chair by the window, Crowley helped Margery into it, and they all stared down at the street. Joan seemed to have run out of curses, rocking back and forth trying to break Aziraphale’s hold. _Good luck with that_, Crowley thought. The arrest in France, multiple armed men and an angel astonished to find he didn’t speak the language anymore, had been one thing. A single bully was another. Aziraphale could keep this idiot under control all day and night, if necessary; and if no neighbor called the authorities.

A subtle warmth pervaded the room, and he realized that the others were all staring at the scene below with peculiar expressions on their faces. He cleared his throat. “_Yes_, she’s stronger than she looks. But don’t make a fuss about it! It’s _not_ who she wants to be.” The peculiar expressions did not go away. Eliza’s particular friend swallowed. Outside Joan, sweating profusely in the cold, twisted in a way that Aziraphale compensated for, to hold him even more securely.

“Look,” said Crowley. “The way you are all feeling right now is perfectly natural and understandable. _I_ understand it _completely_. But just so we’re all on the same page: _First,_ she’s mine. _Second_, this isn’t who she wants to be. _Third_, we need to figure out a way to deal with the Joan problem, because I don’t think even Az - Felicity can talk him round to not being a dangerous excrescence upon the face of the earth in any reasonable period of time. And fourth, _Felicity’s mine._ All clear?”

Margery covered her eyes and the others turned away, blinking. “Yes,” said Julia. “Well! The first and most obvious thing is, that Margery lives here now. You must never go back, dearie! We can keep him out of the house and break the articles and you’ll be safe.”

“I can’t stay indoors forever,” said Margery, looking both more calm and more miserable than Crowley’d seen her before. Circumstances had gone beyond her capacity for dramatic displays. “And _what about Clarissa_?”

Phillida cleared her throat. “His wife is not your responsibility.”

“Eve!” Aziraphale called. “I’d like a consultation.”

Crowley leaned out. “Coming, angel!”

“Do not jump through the window!”

“You’re no fun!”

Phillida caught his arm on his way past her. “No authorities,” she said. “We can’t -“

“What do you take me for?” Crowley shook her off.

He took the steep exterior stairs two at a time, an advantage of long legs, and walked a half-circle around the situation. Aziraphale appeared irritated. The bookshop plans he’d brought leaned neatly against the area railings. Joan panted with desire to beat someone to a pulp: Aziraphale, Margery, his wife, he didn’t much care. He also, disturbingly, had the same reaction to Aziraphale’s effortless strength as everyone inside did. “I begin to feel people staring,” complained Aziraphale. “He’s not listening, and I’d rather not be all night about this. What do you think?”

_“By god, I’ll see you all hung, every bleeding one of you!”_

“I think you need to write this one off as a loss. Once Wrath and Lust get melded together in someone like that, my lot’s sure of them. Deal with him as a hazard, not a soul.”

“I know, but I must allow him his eleventh hour. And if I hold him here much longer I’m afraid he’ll have apoplexy.”

“That’d solve everything,” Crowley pointed out. “You’d even be ministering him during his eleventh hour.”

“You have no right to hold me!” Joan gasped, or possibly sobbed. “I will have my rights! _Murder! Murder!”_

“I didn’t call you down so you could be snide,” Aziraphale answered Crowley. “Normally in a case like this I’d take him somewhere quiet, put him to sleep with some instructive dreams, and leave him to free will when he wakes, but, well -“

“It’s different when he’s threatening a house specifically under your protection, yeah.” Crowley spared him from finishing the sentence. “And here’s a bonus: he’s started in on his wife, and Margery thinks she’s pregnant.”

_“My wife is no bloody concern of yours!”_

Aziraphale tutted and sighed. “I’ve got half a mind to curse him, but I can’t think of any that would be effective, that don’t violate free will.”

“I know you don’t care for Bedlam, but he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone from there. I could flash some eye, give him something to rave about.”

Joan screeched in indignation. Perhaps he’d run out of words. That’d be nice.

“I suppose. It’s such a miserable den, though!”

_“Let me go, you goddamned mollies! You co-“_

“Oh, shut up,” said Crowley, and put him to sleep.

“All right, that’s a start,” said Aziraphale, adjusting to holding Joan’s passive rather than resisting weight. He breathed into the man’s face, still lined with his waking passions. “_Dream your way through every injury you’ve done to every person you’ve had in your power, every advantage you’ve taken, with yourself in the place of the injured party. You shall wake when you’ve finished, not before.”_

“That could take some time,” said Crowley. “Where shall we store him?”

“A hospital, I suppose - oh, I know!” Without the pressure of direct confrontation, Aziraphale’s thought processes were resuming normal function. “There’s a fellow at St. Luke’s that I met a month or so ago. Very interested in microscopy and germ theory, which isn’t relevant here, but he could give me a hand finding a bed and I could keep an eye on things when I pop in for my regular encouragement times. I’m afraid there’s a possibility that the dreams will only confirm Joan in his sins, the sense of powerlessness, you know. So it’ll be much better if I’m on hand when he wakes. ”

“It’s not the closest hospital, but that’s all the better.”

“It is? Why?”

“Well, you don’t know his name. You don’t know where he came from, what he was doing, anything. You found him having a fit in the street and carried him to the hospital because that’s the kind of thing you do.”

“He’ll remember when he wakes up, though.” Aziraphale propped Joan against the railing, snagging his coat on one of the finials to keep him upright.

“Look at that aura. You don’t make that mess in a couple of years. He’ll be sleeping through his own bad deeds for _days_. Plenty of time for somebody to have a chat with Mrs. Joan, work out a game plan that keeps everyone safe if he doesn’t wake up a better man, which he won’t. If no one at the hospital knows who to send for, his wife doesn’t have to waste time visiting him or dealing with doctors. Good? Go grab a cab.”

“It’s on its way already.”

“Just like that?”

“Don’t you summon cabs?”

“I don’t have a miracle budget!”

“And I have the satisfaction of working out ways to get more use from a unit than certain angels could get out the entire allowance.”

“So, what, you make your life easier through spite-driven finesse?”

“If you like. What did you plan to do to him behind my back?”

“Oh, you know, go through his pockets. Maybe lay on a _minor_ curse. Something to spare his wife, you know.”

A cab turned the corner. “Well, I’m much too occupied hailing that hack to thwart you, so that’s one for your side.” Aziraphale trotted toward the vehicle, waving his arms and hallooing. Crowley rifled through Joan’s pockets, removing calling cards, notecase, and pocketbook. A fizz like static electricity snapped into the limp right arm. “_Every time you raise this arm to strike it shall grow weaker,_” Crowley informed him. _Zap_, into his jaw. “_Every time you try to speak the name of one you want to wrong, your tongue shall fumble and grow numb._” _Zap_, into his breast. “_Every time you try to impose your will on someone, you shall remember how easily my angel restrained you, and feel how weak you truly are in your whole being._ That should pull your teeth for a bit.”

“What are you doing?” Phillida asked, coming down the front stairs. “And what on earth did _Felicity_ do to him? Not that I object, but it’s good to know these things.”

Crowley pulled a snuffbox out of Joan’s front pocket. “Nothing. He came all over funny. No doubt his own bad temper’s done him a mischief. Felicity’ll carry him to a doctor chap she knows, get him out of our hair for tonight.”

“And you’re - robbing him?”

“No, no, no, perish the thought! I figured you and Julia could take his things to Mrs. Joan. No telling how long he’ll be in hospital.” He handed over the snuffbox and the notecase. “Lots of cash there. She’ll need it.”

Aziraphale leading the cab to the curb at this point, and a small contingent of regulars arriving, the next few minutes were a bustle, till the cab bore Aziraphale and his newly anonymous charge away, the regulars went inside, and Crowley handed off the rest of the items he’d taken off Joan and collected the bookshop plans. “The two of you seem, ah, very, not at all, it’s as if this sort of situation weren’t unusual to you,” said Phillida, pausing at the foot of the stairs.

“It’s not,” admitted Crowley. “We’ve both cleaned up nastier messes than this.” In palaces and hovels, fields in Mesopotamia and alleys in Germany. Earth was a messy place.

“I - see.”

Crowley saw, too: the fear squirming in her, the horror at the notion that sweet Felicity and her sardonic beau had _unsavory connections_. That their skillsets were useful, but did not fit inside the respectable island world she and Julia’d built. That hangings for assault and robbery were far more common than hangings for buggery. For Aziraphale’s sake he’d like to quash that train of thought; but they’d agreed long ago that a human who saw enough to speculate should not be steered from any mundane explanation. No intimate human connection of theirs could last even as long as a human’s lifetime, and they did not control the time of severance. “His family, my family, they cross paths - this is _nothing_,” he said, and left her to make sense of that.

“Well. It’s a good thing you were both here tonight, isn’t it?” Phillida’s smile was nervous, but real. “When, ah, when Felicity was in quod and you got her out -“

“That was for being prettier than was wise. On my honor.”

Phillida looked relieved. “Yes, well, there but for the grace of God go all of us.”

Crowley tried not to let his face harden. “Right. Mind if I sit in the library till Felicity comes back? We won't have much time to discuss the bookshop at this rate.”

"By all means," said Phillida, and led him in.


	3. Bookshop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley tried to make it earlier, but comes along at the end of the big day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter assumes familiarity with the unfilmed scene in which Gabriel and Sandalphon come to give Aziraphale insincere commendations and yank him back to Heaven on the eve of opening his bookshop, found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1diJukGVVYlWJSnJ_Mq5dKjtC2DjHNU5ND8n3gR3-BRQ/edit

Once assured that Gabriel and Sandalphon had left without Aziraphale, Crowley took a long walk around Mayfair and Soho, and only returned to the bookshop as the attendees of the grand opening party dispersed. The late afternoon sun highlighted the entire street, transforming the traffic of hacks, sedan chairs, cabriolets, and gigs into an allegorical procession along the leys around the shop, which nestled in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, reinforcing the powers Aziraphale had coaxed into doing his bidding. Or, as he put it, the bidding of Heaven, which was bollocks, but Crowley wasn’t about to say so.

A little ichor in the mortar, evenings at Phillida’s checking each other’s calculations, afternoons of Crowley casually strolling by as Aziraphale fussily observed the workmen, the right miracles at the right times, the right materials, and this was the result. The most stable place in Soho; probably in all England; possibly in the Northern Hemisphere, despite Aziraphale’s flattered modest scoffing at the notion. How had the angels not _noticed_ how perfect the bookshop was? How could they not_ feel_ the faint hum in the pavement, the warmth, the backwater of peace and refreshment in the chaos of the city?

The humans did. He knew by the smiles. He stopped to greet Phillida and Julia and bowed to familiar faces among the high and lowlights of literary, intellectual, musical London: obscure poets and lions, random passersby, and honest tradesmen who’d come because they knew Aziraphale thought they were every bit as able to appreciate a good book as the toffs were. He had a moment of uncertainty, when he spotted Joan; but even he, nervously guarding his withered right arm, seemed to find the afternoon more pleasant than not, and bowed to Phillida with an almost humble mien.

No angels in evidence, anywhere, which - on the one hand - _good_; and on the other hand - how_ dare_ they? He’d hoped that some of Aziraphale’s old students might show up, which was one reason he’d made himself scarce all day, but if they had they were long gone.

Crowley slipped into the shop behind a departing young woman who was certainly a servant when not in her Sunday best, clutching a brown-paper parcel about the size of a complete triple decker novel. He flipped the sign hanging against the glass from “Open” to “Closed” and scuffed the threshold with his foot, feeling the new wood slick with varnish, and fed in a little power: _zap_, a final blessing riding on the rest of those the angel had already layered in during the course of building: _If you are in danger, if you are in pain, if you are desperate, if you are afraid, if you are overwhelmed, if you are Crowley, Welcome, come in and be safe. If you are fire, if you are flood, if you are disease, if you are despair, if you are injustice, if you are violence, turn aside, We are Closed._

Crowley pulled the door to, and felt the wards click into place with the latch. Hell couldn’t see them; and Heaven had already been by today. Aziraphale came out from behind the counter, tired and beaming and frayed around the edges. “Good evening! How wonderful to see you! I was so afraid you wouldn’t come back!”

“Thought somebody else from your lot might show up to wish you luck or something,” said Crowley, holding out the package he’d tried to deliver earlier. “This is better anyway, because now you don’t have to share your chocolates.”

He got a Smile for that, and another when he snapped his fingers and tidied away the disarray all those visitors had left behind. Aziraphale ushered him to a chair and brought out a decanter and glasses, chattering animatedly about how lovely everything had been, who had said what, which books he had sold and given away with blessings attached, which authors had graciously inscribed personal copies for him, how Margery and her new young man had been _so_ disappointed not to see Crowley and did he remember Little Jane from the old lodgings, well she would be charring for him and she was so delighted when he gave her _Castle Rackrent_, she had never owned a book before and had barely been able to read a dozen years ago.

Crowley draped his legs over the arm of the chair, feeling the faint pulse of power from the calling circle hidden under the rug, eyes flicking occasionally to the sparkling windows, waiting for his angel to shed his load of words and overstimulation and settle at last in the other armchair, with his coat off and his hair mussed and all his tension discharged. Crowley helped himself from the decanter left within his reach, raised his glass, and said: “To A. Fell, Purveyor of Books to the Gentry, the best and holiest bookshop in Britain.”

That got him a third Smile and a distinct flush as Aziraphale lifted his own glass. “To its demonic savior! _What_ did you do to Gabriel to make him change his mind so suddenly? I thought I was done for! And I was terrified you’d do something foolish and give Gabriel or Sandalphon a chance to smite you!”

“Just reminded him I was still out here and you were still the only angel who could handle me,” said Crowley. “You must’ve sold your triumph over me in Paris a bit too well, so he thought I wasn’t a problem anymore, but he backed off at once as soon as he realized I’m still a player. What I want to know is, what the _deuce_ happened to wanting you back without the body? I thought as long as we kept you safe you were - safe!”

Aziraphale turned his glass with one hand and plucked a bonbon from the chocolate box with the other. “Well. I had a thought, toward the end of lunch, but then people started arriving and I didn’t have time to develop it.”

Crowley made an encouraging noise as the bonbon did its job. When the last bit of pleasure had been sucked from Aziraphale’s teeth he resumed, feeling his way through his thought with prim care.

“The _key_ is, I think it_ must_ be, Michael. It’s hard to tell with Gabriel, sometimes, how much of anything he says has _actual_ meaning; but as I understand it, the undoing of my pinioning rests on Michael’s agreement that it can be allowed once I am discorporated and issued a new body. And here’s Gabriel, after 5800 years of waiting for that event, not only recalling me in the present corporation, but suggesting _Michael_ as my replacement? The Leader of the Host on Guardian duty? What restructuring _nightmare_ could introduce that as even a possibility?”

Crowley raised his eyebrows. “I was so blindsided I didn’t even think of that. You reckon Michael blotted her copybook so bad back in ‘93 she’s lost her position?”

“Anything of that magnitude should have been reported in the _Celestial Times_, but I think it’s safe to say that Gabriel currently has the upper hand in the interdepartmental rivalry between the Host and Earthly Affairs.” Aziraphale frowned into his glass. “I hope he was acting prematurely and out of overconfidence. The fact that he wanted to rush me back to Heaven without having a replacement ready supports that. If Michael were deposed as Leader of the Host, the repercussions would be - oh, I don’t like to think of how that would destabilize Heaven! And your lot -“

“Would have to pounce,” agreed Crowley. “Yeah, let’s hope not! I’m supposed to take a meeting downstairs next week. I’ll see if I can pick up any gossip from Ligur. He’s always got the latest skinny on his old boss. In the meantime, let’s assume it’ll all work out and focus on the important stuff. Like, _you_ got a _commendation_! Let me see your medal! Where’d you put it?”

“Oh, it’s around here somewhere. Let me look.” Aziraphale popped another bonbon into his mouth, wiggled with delight (by the smell it had a liqueur center), and hopped up to bustle around his sales counter. Crowley watched him search his drawers and shelves, the unease that had gripped him all day loosening at last. His angel was safe, was here, had gotten what he wanted. Crowley had acted in time, and could put away the shock and dismay of seeing Gabriel with Aziraphale; of finally matching an aspect to the name of Sandalphon.

Because Crowley recognized Sandalphon, oh yes. From the War. The thuggish little brownnoser hovering around Gabriel, who’d come to the enclosure where captives milled about looking to escape, and decided that the most efficient thing was to pinion them all. Personally. By hand, _rip rip rip_ and let them bleed. He’d changed since then - hadn’t they all? But where Aziraphale had grown more complex, more nervous and precise and joyful and pragmatic and sly and silly, Sandalphon had simplified down to basics, less an angel than a disciplined but vicious dog. All his energy was focused onto Gabriel, as the war hounds of kings used to focus on their masters (not the kings, but their dog trainers); and when he looked at Aziraphale, he looked like one of those dogs awaiting the order to kill.

In a way, recognizing him took some of the edge off the idea of Sandalphon. The pain of Crowley’s pinion had been swallowed up by the pain of Falling, and even that pain had faded into a minor background ache long ago. Every time he returned to Hell he dealt with a dozen thugs as bad as Sandalphon, and worse. He had no power to hurt Crowley any more, and his power to hurt Aziraphale was borrowed, not innate. If ever that dog of an angel Fell, he’d be as close to the bottom of the food chain in Hell as he now was close to the top of it in Heaven, standing next to Gabriel.

“Here they are,” said Aziraphale. “Do you know, I haven’t really looked at either of them yet?” He handed the medal to Crowley and unrolled the commendation himself.

Crowley presumed the ribbon had some sort of color, but it wasn’t one of the ones he could perceive. The metal glittered, too light in his hand to be gold but possibly silver or gilt. Once he got it the right distance from his eyes and tilted correctly to utilize light and shadow, he saw the stamped wings and the Enochian inscription “Outstanding Service, 5000 Yrs” around the rim. “They owed you _this_ 800 years ago.”

“The commendation is so verbose and general I won’t bother reading it out,” said Aziraphale. “It boils down to ‘How can you stand having been on earth so long? We appreciate your failure to complain about it.’ I’d hoped it would be more - specific. Mind you, the calligraphy is pretty, and I know you can’t see it, but there’s a whole rainbow of ink here. Gabriel’s signature is violet and takes up a third of the space.”

Crowley sneered and plopped the medal back into the box. “Because of course_ that’s_ the most important thing on the page. You’d think after taking so long to admit you’re doing good work they’d make a better job of it. Put the things away, angel! You don’t need their lame rewards. You've got a bookshop!”

Aziraphale did so with no sign of reluctance. “I believe the recall was supposed to be the true reward. Even a lukewarm acknowledgment is better than that. At least I know I’ve earned it - unlike some!”

“S’not my fault Hell never knows what any given operative is doing.”

“It is when you send them memos containing dubious information.”

“I only do that in self-defense! I cannot afford to lose any standing and get loaded with rubbish assignments again. I have important things to do!”

“Speaking of - how are those offices coming along? I keep meaning to go by, but opening the shop has kept me so busy I can never manage it.”

“They’ll be ready in time to launch on All Saint’s Eve, and then we’ll have a matching set - chaos in stability in Mayfair, stability in chaos in Soho - we’re making a thing of beauty, here, and I wish I could figure a way to wring a commendation out of those wankers below, but they’d never grasp the principles we’re using.”

“That’s true, you’re being horrendously evil,” beamed Aziraphale. “No one who works in those offices will be safe. I need to buy enough gunpowder to blow them up before you can let them out.”

Crowley barked a laugh. “Do that, angel, and it will be _war_!”

This launched a round robin game of one-upmanship, each verbally devastating each other’s half of their glorious, dynamic shared project, and remaking them into increasingly bizarre and silly counterprojects, the offices turned into a garden, which Crowley planted with weeds and thorns and ugly choking plants, which Aziraphale transformed into a goat orphanage, which supplied the poor of London with meat, clothing, and employment; so Crowley fed Aziraphale’s books to the goats and turned the bookshop into a brothel, where Aziraphale allowed the women and molly boys to control their pay and working conditions, and on and on and on, until somehow they were chasing each other through the heavens in ships made of oyster shells and lobbing stars at one another, as illustrated by images written in pipe smoke.

“That all sounds like way too much work,” declared Crowley. “Tell you what. I’ll be tearing down and rebuilding on this property every twenty to twenty-five years anyway, to keep the chaos flowing. So when it’s time, how about you and I destroy the building together? And we write up one report for your lot, where you bearded me in my lair, and one for my lot, where I lured you to your doom, and each of us barely escapes, but we’re each a hero in our own report?”

“That sounds lovely, my dear, but I don’t think I’m prepared to lie on that scale.” Aziraphale squinted up at the glass dome, where pipe smoke gathered like wisps of cloud against the pale evening sky. “Not unless it’s to protect someone.”

“Well, we’ve got time to think about it,” said Crowley. “Your bookshop’s beautiful, angel. Already. Go outside, you’ll see it, meshed in perfectly with the power of the city. And when mine’s finished, and the gears interlock and feed into each other -“

“If we time the initial push right -“

“We _will_!”

“I know, I’m just - I’m so nervous about my part in it.”

“You are _no_t contributing to evil, I promise, any more than I’m contributing to good. It’s the Arrangement, that’s all, only on a larger scale and automated a bit.”

“I know, my dear, that’s not it! I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake and spoil your design.”

“You won’t!” _You are an integral part of the design, it couldn’t work without you._ “I dunno why Heaven and Hell weren’t set up like this in the first place. Every time our sides cancel each other out the humans get mired in survival mode. They’d be better off without us. The only way to be relevant is to amplify them. Multiply the choices and make every choice matter more, every deed rippling further and influencing every other deed. Less work, more results!”

“Mm. I hope so.” Aziraphale ate a bonbon. “I hope Gabriel doesn’t change his mind again before your offices are ready. I couldn’t do my part from Heaven.”

“Won’t happen. You’re here for good.”

“I’d feel better if I knew what he wanted me _for_! I can’t render myself undesirable if I don’t understand the desire!”

Crowley’s heart stopped, and he waited for Aziraphale to ask the obvious question. 

Because he’d Seen what Gabriel wanted, and it was so much worse than the jealous kneejerk notion that Aziraphale’s boss fancied him. Organless and devoid of honest appetite, Gabriel beheld Aziraphale, saw all that eagerness and kindness, that curiosity and delight, that generosity and stubbornness, that humility and hedonism, that vast slow cumbersome thorough intellect, that radiant willingness to love everything from bonbons to God, and wanted to focus it all upon himself. To make the angel his, and his alone.

Which was sickeningly easy for Crowley to understand.

But for Aziraphale to love only one thing was for him to cease to be Aziraphale. Crowley had understood that, and accepted that, in the same hour that he had understood and accepted his own feelings. Aziraphale was like free will: to control was to destroy.

Gabriel understood that, too. He looked forward to it.

Today, he’d thought that he was about to finally get the least controllable angel who’d ever slipped the bonds of Heaven trapped under his eye and begin transforming him into another devoted dog, an intellectual Sandalphon to hunt in tandem. He hadn’t been oblivious to Aziraphale’s dismay at having his bookshop snatched away. He’d savored it as the first step in breaking him down.

Compared to what Gabriel wanted, Joan’s Lust to physically control his apprentice and his wife seemed almost wholesome.

Crowley really, really did not want to explain all that to Aziraphale. But he would, if asked.

Aziraphale ate another bonbon, and licked his lips. “Oh, well, he’s gone, and I’m determined not to fret about anything tonight! I wish you could taste chocolate properly! You always bring me such lovely things to eat, and you never get to enjoy them yourself.”

Crowley’s heart resumed beating.“Think of it as an investment,” he said. “I was hoping you’d skip going to dinner tonight, and read some more of _Caleb Williams_ to me. I keep trying, but that typeface gives me eyestrain.”

Aziraphale wiggled. “Certainly, my dear, if you would like!”

-30-


End file.
